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United States (2010–2011 Book Market)Key Indicators Values Sources, commentsBook market size (print + electronic [p+e], at consumer prices)New titles per 1 million inhabitants 1116Publishers’ net salerevenues: $27.124 billionDown from $27,124 bn. Source: AAP/BISG; data for 2012. Nielsen reported print sales tohave declined by 9.3% in units, in 2012, against 2011. (Quoted in PublishersLunch, 7January 2013). No comparable data available for ebooks.eBook titles (available from publishers) 1,700,000 Amazon claims in early 2013 to have 1,700,000 ebook titles in their catalog, the vastmajority of which are in English.Market share of ebooks ca. 20% of all trade sales AAP/BISG; data for first half 2013.Key market parametersNo price regulationthe ebook market further, with new challenges with regardto pricing strategies for both print and ebooks anticipated.In late July 2013, for instance, Amazon had decided to discountmajor bestsellers, inlcuding Inferno by Dan Brown,between 50 and 65% in response to a campaign of discountingby Overstock, which subsequently ended theskirmish in early August (see Publishers Weekly, August 12,2013).The other litigation, on Google’s practice of scanning hugenumbers of titles, both in and out of copyright, from libraries,continued to -grind on- in its eigth year, after thecompany settled with publishers as well as the Associationof American Publishers (AAP) (see Silicon Republic, October13, 2012), but it is still in a confrontation with the AmericanAuthor’s Guild (for a ccincise status and assessment, see e.g.Publishers Weekly, July 4, 2013).The US ebook market in 2012The US publishing industry and the US public have embracednew reading formats like no other nation. For readers,ebooks came as a natural and permanent choice inaddition to printed books. Publishers have effectively respondedto consumers’ fast-growing acceptance of newreading devices by constantly redefining and expandingnew concepts for books.“The eBook phenomenon continued in 2012 with eBooksranking, for the first time, as the year’s #1 individual formatfor Adult Fiction” was the headline in the BookStats reporton US publishing in 2011, issued jointly by the Associationof American Publishers (AAP) and the Book Industry StudyGroup (BISG) in July 2012. The $27.2 billion 2011 US bookmarket declined by 2.5& from $27.94 billion in 2010, whileunit sales grew by 3.4%, as did the number of new printtitles, from 328,259 million in 2010 to a projected 347,178million in 2011 (Bowker, June 5, 2012).By the end of 2012, with incomplete data available for theentire 12 months, a somewhat complex picture tookshape. Unit sales of print books had fallen over 9% accordingto Nielsen BookScan, continuing the decline seen a yearearlier, from 2010 to 2011 (Publishers Weekly, January 6,2013). Print sales were largely driven by a few bestsellingtitles, notably E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy with14.4 million print units sold, followed by Suzanne Collins’Hunger Games books with 9.6 million. “Together, these twoauthors accounted for over 4 percent of all print sales forthe year” (data from Nielsen BookScan, quoted in PublishersLunch,January 7, 2013).Despite the decline in print, according to the AmericanAssociation of Publishers (AAP), based on data from September2012, the overall bookmarket reflected “the trendswe’ve seen all year: continued publishing growth overallwith significant increases in children’s/young adult (especiallyeBook format) and slight erosion in religion publishing”(“StatShot” for September 2012, quoted in PublishersLunch,January 25, 2013).Similarly, the US Census Bureau reported that bookstoresales increased by 3.3% in November 2012, largely compensatingfor prior losses (Publishers Weekly, January 15,2013). As for holiday and year-end sales, independentbooksellers widely congratulated themselves on the highlypositive development in sales (Publishers Weekly in asummary for this report). At the same time, Barnes & Noblereported a decline of 8.2% in comparable store sales forthe nine-week holiday period. Digital NOOK sales decreasedby 12.6% compared to 2011, with revenue fromdigital content going up by 13.1% and device unit salesgoing down (Barnes & Noble press release, January 3, 2013).18 The Global eBook Report